December 2025

Welcome to Hank’s December 2025 Astrophotography Blog, and Happy New Year! It’s been a busy year, and with the help of BHAS members, I’ve been able to set up my observatory to capture images all night when the weather and sky conditions allow. It’s amazing to think that just a few short years ago, I’d be satisfied with 15 minutes of light to capture a deep sky image; now I often catch four hours or more of light data. The light that comes from these faint objects is thousands if not millions of light years away, and by adding more of that light data to the images I process more details can be seen. The other change is that I am using SIRIL astrophotography post processing software that helps bring out those details.

This month I have tried to enlarge the field of view around large deep sky objects by taking 2 or more photos of the area around a target, and in postprocessing I stitch them together into a mosaic to show what surrounds the object.

First up is a photo I took at the end of November and didn’t process until December. Andromeda Galaxy would not quite fit into one photo, so I took two photos and put them together into a mosaic. Andromeda is a galaxy close by at 2.5 million light years distant and larger than our Milky Way Galaxy.

The Flaming Star Nebula was also taken last month. It has a tail that won’t fit into one photo on my telescope, so I again took a pair of photos to get show more of it.

The Witch Head Nebula is a fun object to photograph, and in looking at it on the star charts, the nebula is really much larger than will fit in one photo, so here are images of just the Witch Head and a 1×2 mosaic showing more of the nebula in the constellation Eridanus.

Often nebulas are near one another, and in the constellation Auriga there are three that are close by. The first image is a 2×2 mosaic of the Spider/Fly Nebula, the Tadpole Nebula, and the Flaming Star Nebula. It is followed by a couple of Spider/Fly Nebula images.

Orion is up in the south now in the evening for several hours, so I couldn’t resist capturing an image of it, along with its companion, the Running Man Nebula. It’s a beauty!

I’ve captured the Rosette Nebula many times, but it is up now for much of the night, and I was able to capture over 7 hours of light over the course of one night. The moon was over half full, so I used my L-Extreme filter to reduce the glare of the Moon by bringing out the Hydrogen and Oxygen light that comes from this nebula.

Until next time, Clear Skies! -Hank